Dragon Prince: For Union and Liberty
Book I- Legacy of the Lost Regiment (1923-1945)
Chapter 2- Life is not as you like it.
Location: Kingdom of Katolis (1923)
The Royal dining room was designed to seat over a hundred, and could be rearranged for as many as a thousand reveling members of the standing battalion. As such it was far from ideal for a family of four. The few members of the staff had tried their best but it just left the family freezing, and their meals- to use a favorite term of his late Aunt's "Weapons grade."
All breathed a sigh of relief when the prince suggested that the drawing room would make for a far better dining experience. That was where they had elected to dine ever since. Rayla felt more comfortable in the more composed place, with its soft red carpets, and cheery paintings depicting farmers bringing in the harvest. It wasn't home, but she'd long laid to rest her feelings about her prolonged exile.
Wonder-of-wonders, even the "twin-terrors" as the staff called them, were on their best behavior for a change. They gleefully consumed jelly tarts which they'd absconded from the kitchen with, and downed juice with a speed that suggested that they were starving. It was proving to be a decent day.
Ulyse Morton and Selena LaReine were having a very different time in this climate. The Sunfire Elf radiated the heat that was the gift of the Arcana she was born with. This meant that she was more than happy to walk the countryside in an armor that lacked all the modesty of her grandmother's generation. The widespread use of fire arms had made armor obsolete. As a result her people hot blooded as they were, threw modesty to the wind for exposed midriffs and breast plates that served no better purpose than gathering the stray eye of anyone in a room with a pulse.
By contrast the man who walked by her side seemed far more human in reaction to the chills in the air. He trotted along half-frozen day and night. His blood-earth heritage granted him only mild lethargy and homesickness. Every time he felt even the faintest warmth from his companion he shuddered with the memories of home. He dreamed nightly of his shifts to crawl from bed and tend to the fire during the winter as his family slept for days on end.
"Whoo-ah!" Selena stretched jumping up, as though she might touch the sun in the sky.
"S—ssome war cry I'm unfamiliar with?" He tried to be sarcastic but it came out to pathetically weak to take seriously.
She danced around him before laying her hands on the shoulders of his blue overcoat. "Come on where's that Yankee swagger?" The blessed heat passed from her hands and warmed his body.
"You have my thanks ma'am." He said, doffing the forage cap that hid the short horns that had never quite grown in on his head.
"Think nothing of it Ulyse. You've been an intriguing companion to say the least." She said.
He sighed sending a burst of visible breath like fire from his mouth. "My apologies for the other night, I don't imbibe of-."
"I won't hear anymore of it, and I told you that it was nothing. Get over yourself." She snapped back. He was a well meaning enough boy. She couldn't really begin to think of him as a man, and it was more than his high tenor voice, or his unfashionably smooth shave. It had little to do with the fact that she pushed 6'3" in bare feet while he barely reached 5' 10" in his boots. None of that really bothered her.
No deep down, what made her feel like he was an adopted brother instead of a man who was a full two years older than her, was the haphazard way in which he went about everything. It was a curious trick, the way in which he could seem to both be the most brilliant person she'd ever met, and like a totally inept moron when it came down to execution of any task.
The two had been lucky that few bandits found it worthwhile to fight in winter, and that fewer still considered one halfling and a sun fire elf with a runic rapier a worthwhile target. Such banditry was not uncommon anywhere on the continent, east or west, there were always bandits. The Columbian League did an admirable job in the spring and summer months out East of pulling in the wretches and putting them to work.
Here in the Pentarchy the responsibility fell to individual kingdoms, but the sad truth was that one really had no guarantee of safety in the increasingly xenophobic human kingdoms. Katolis was relatively well mannered to elves… relatively. When they needed a room at an inn, they had little trouble getting it. Neither had been given any hints of just how bad it was.
The tramped on through the day until they came to a bridge over a frozen river, at that point they became all too aware. It was there that a hundred crimson clad guards struggled out from under the bridge armed with gleaming muskets and brandishing a red flag with the five stars of the Pentarchy.
"Drop your arms you pointy eared freaks!"
"Callum?" Rayla could see the way in which he tore through the note.
"Oh it nothing, Ezran is coming back early," his eyes wandered to where his children had been eating. They seemed to have run off somewhere.
She smiled, "No! How will the kingdom survive?"
"Well I can't speak for the kingdom, but I can speak for my waistline." He said, patting his stomach for good measure.
Rayla reached over to do the same, "Aww when are you expecting?" She teased, "besides mister high and mighty Archmage, yours truly has no intention of not making you work for every bite you take."
"I know, I know." He stood and gestured to the door. "Shall we take this outside?"
"Tonight's a full moon, and I for one cannot wait to see how you try to avoid getting your ass kicked." The elf smirked, "Until then I think I can keep you busy with… other things."
He laughed, "Other things?"
She grabbed his arm and dragged him into the hall, "Yup."
"What's sorts of?" He was cut off by Rayla pushing him against the wall, and covering his mouth. She pointed up at the exposed wooden columns.
"Oh the sort of things that a little boy and girl would be scarred for life by seeing." Both heard giggling above that seemed to get more distant. Callum tried to ignore the fact that his wife was pressing her body against him trying, and failing. "Irna, Hatran, just because I can't see you doesn't mean I can't hear you clip clopping around." A few more seconds and she finally let go of his mouth.
"Give it a few more years and they'll be unstoppable." He gasped.
She said nothing for a moment longer before backing away and looking at him gravely. The Moonshadow elf whispered, "I played along because I knew about the eyes and ears on us. Now I want you to tell me what's bugging you about that letter?"
His reply did not remedy her fear, "Not here."